Thank you for your interest in the Rethink Learning Design project. We are just catching our breath after facilitating two events and want to share some highlights of those events where we explored and seeded the idea of developing an ‘untextbook’ on critical learning design. We invite you to continue engaging with us through the Rethink Learning Design project by signing up on our website to receive updates of upcoming events, contributing to our splot with ideas for the untextbook or about critical learning design, and following and contributing to our hashtag #RethinkLD on Twitter.
At the OER19 session in Galway, Ireland, there were about 60 people in attendance and after breaking into 4 groups we had a whirlwind 30 minutes where we asked participants to discuss and note their ideas for four questions:
Some Highlights:
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How to include student voices, spaces for knowledge to change and shift over time. Do we have the right tools to do this? Or do we continue to replicate the traditional publication structures – how do we break free from this?
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Fixed narrative structures take everybody along the same path, are there multiple ways to approach the content of the textbook and take it from different angles. How do you build this?
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How can a textbook provide a variety of different and/or opposite perspectives to counter dominant narratives
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Non-disposable assignments and coursework as part of the development of learning designs and untextbooks
At Cascadia we had a nice sized group of about 20-25 and a much more reasonable time period of four hours to spend with a wonderfully engaged and curious group from BC, Washington, and Oregon. We invited 2 guests – Dr. Claudia Krebs from UBC and Jason Toal from SFU to help us stretch our imaginations in thinking about critical learning design, the digital, and visual language. We led the group through the same four questions we used at OER19, only this time there was lots of time for discussion and sharing. The discussions introduced us to some new ideas such as the idea of foraging vs curating; thinking about layers and lenses, circles and cycles within texts; and the advantages and pitfalls of narrative structures. We ended the day with a 25/10 liberating structure which surfaced some great ideas in response to this question:
What theme, topic, section, chapter would you like to see as part of an untextbook on critical learning design?
Summary
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Description of interactive involvement of students in creating content + revisive learning experiences (with examples of challenges….etc in humanities, social sciences, + natural science)
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Discipline specific examples
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Building the rationale (the case) for the shift to critical LD
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Walking with the learners – how to engage them, empower them, gather their ideas, build trust, encourage them to make a difference
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Student generated content (and non-disposable assignments) (this could be clustered with the following – Partnerships (including with students, faculty, staff, institutions) (10), ideas for incorporating student feedback at intervals in the design process (10), Helping learners define something to learn about that is personally engaging for them within framework of learning outcomes
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A section on “How to do critical learning design within CONSTRAINTS we may face (institutional, financial, time, other resources, LMS)
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Design via themes instead of linear progression (new ways of connecting material/exploring subjects/outcomes)
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Designing for english language learners
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Inclusive design practices
Slides from Cascadia
In reflecting on the sessions we have discussed how it seems that the project is surfacing a variety of tensions as we consider shifting how we conceive, build and sustain a collection of resources we are terming the “untextbook”. Highlight below are some of the themes and contradictions we have been exploring:
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Replicating structures within current OER platforms (pressbooks). Are there other platforms or forms we can use (ie Federated Wiki, Mike Caufield).
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Linear narratives vs multiple pathways, perspectives, issues, viewpoints, endpoints, starting points
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Tying the web together in a meaningful way
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Supporting the idea of learner foraging, but need for guidance. How is this different from curation?
Looking ahead
At the moment we are preparing for the ETUG Spring Workshop 2019 where we will present and discuss a more detailed overview of what we have learned so far from our various engagements. We are exploring the ideas contributed so far, and hope to move these forward at the ETUG session.